Mark Wahlberg Shares His Full-Body Boxing Workout

Ready for Your Next Round?

Mark Wahlberg has proved the boxer's maxim: If you just keep punching, good things happen

Mark Wahlberg asks. He's not talking about sparking up a Bob Marley special, though—just putting a few golf balls. I'm out at his house in Beverly Hills—way up in Beverly Hills—and I nod before following him to the putting green, which is between the big house and the guesthouse. It overlooks his home gym (another building with about the square footage of your local Gold's) and the outdoor basketball court with the Celtics logo painted in the center. The sun glances off the nearby pool, the smog has lifted, and Wahlberg, who turns 37 on June 5, is happy to be home after extended trips for work.

"I always wanted to create a great guy space," he says, knocking a 30-footer within 3 feet. "I bought the place in 2000 and it was just the house. Everything else was just a dirt hill. I always wanted the gym, the guesthouse for my mom, the pool, this green. It has some breaks and it rolls pretty true."

He's right. I follow his line and knock my ball inside his. If he notices, he doesn't say anything. Up a few steps from the green is a tee box that faces out over the roof of the gym and looks down into a wooded canyon. A big net hangs in front to catch the balls, but he tells me that he sometimes drops the net to unload into the canyon. I'm thinking, This place defines what a guy space should be.

This is Wahlberg's reward for focusing on his work, fitness, and family. He has two kids now—4-year-old Ella and 2-year-old Michael—with his longtime girlfriend, Rhea Durham. And, he says, they want "a couple more." His family is the reason he's able to focus at all. In fact, his kids figured so prominently in his mind during the filming of The Happening (the new M. Night Shyamalan film that hits theaters this month) that he had to tone down his performance. Wahlberg's character, a science teacher, is decidedly not physical but must protect a child during a doomsday scenario that causes people to spontaneously commit suicide. (That's all the plot spoilage you'll squeeze from us.) Wahlberg, who pictured himself with his own kids in the same situation, grins.

"We would joke around, and Night would say, 'How would you handle this situation?' I told him, 'When it's life and death and you don't know what's going on, you have to start getting a little violent yourself.' Your first instinct is the kids. I'm overprotective. I see a 4-year-old shove my 4-year-old and I want to kind of . . ." He chuckles. "Well, you know. You can't imagine hitting one of your kids, but you wouldn't mind protecting them from another kid."

Degrees of kid protection are relative for Hollywood A-listers, so it's interesting to note that while some actors' children have become the choice prey of paparazzi (see also Pitt, Brad and Cruise, Tom), Wahlberg and his family are pretty much left alone. This is no accident. "We're low-key," he says. "If I'm home, I'm either playing golf or hanging out here. My life is boring, so there's no story to tell."

Not anymore, anyway. Back in the day, in Boston, there was a whole lot of story to tell, and it has been told often. The brawling, stealing, and general low-life living was so extreme that at age 16 Wahlberg spent time in prison for assault. And even after that, when his hip-hop career and then his acting career took off, his reputation became the story and dominated everything else. "My kids are really in the me-me-me stage right now," he says. "But I think I was like that all the way up until I actually had my own kid."

Presto: Something clicked. Wahlberg realized he really needed to change only one thing. "I don't waste time at night anymore," he says. "You work a 12-hour day, then go to dinner, then go out for 4 hours? You're done. That's the stuff that kicks your ass."

Men, especially young men, think they can do all that without compromising their A-game. Wahlberg tried; he failed. It's easy to hit the town after a day of killing it in the office; it's never as simple the other way around. You end up with a subpar career that takes a backseat to lifestyle. He says it's easy to eliminate that mistake. "I'm up at 6 in the morning. I put the eggs on, eat, hit the gym. I just get it all done."

Wahlberg's past few years are proof he's found a groove: The actor knocked out the films Four Brothers, Invincible, The Departed (for which he earned an Oscar nomination), Shooter, We Own the Night, and The Happening in that span. Not to mention executive-producing the HBO megahit Entourage (based loosely on his own life) and a similar commitment to the critically lauded In Treatment, also on HBO. A full slate lies ahead for him, too. Wahlberg just wrapped The Lovely Bones with Peter Jackson and is now shooting a Max Payne film, based on the video-game series. A sequel to The Italian Job is also in the works, plus a wildly intense boxing flick called The Fighter, if Wahlberg gets his wish—more on that later. The rest is family time, gym, and golf. He's built something that's far more than structures on a dirt hill. His boring life, indeed.